


Survival of the Fittest

by lori (zakhad), zakhad



Series: Captain and Counselor [46]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 13:32:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6425926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zakhad/pseuds/lori, https://archiveofourown.org/users/zakhad/pseuds/zakhad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ah, regulations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survival of the Fittest

"We have a few senior officers who need to renew some of their certifications," Deanna said, glancing down the table then turning to look at the captain.

The senior staff meeting had been all about the next foray into the Beta Quadrant, and possible diplomatic endeavors with the Laxamilla. She'd provided what little information Starfleet had given them on the species while they had coffee. Jean-Luc smiled and picked up the empty plate in front of him, and rose to recycle it and his empty mug. "All right. What certifications?"

"Ben, deLio and Batris need to renew their basic first aid. And for some reason, Starfleet has decided that in addition to physical fitness standards, basic first aid, and basic repair, all officers need to renew basic survival certification on a regular basis. As if continued existence on a starship isn't proof that you're all nearly indestructible."

Several people smirked, and Edison snorted. "I was going to ask about that. I got the automated notice when I brought up messages the other day."

Deanna turned to Jean-Luc and smiled serenely up at him as he stood next to his chair. "So for how many decades have you ignored your automated notice?"

"I don't ignore my messages, Commander."

She raised her elegantly-sculpted brows. "You delete them?"

He stared at her, not quite a glare, and exhaled slowly while ignoring the grins of some of the younger officers. "None of my messages have informed me that I'm losing my job or being written up for not renewing that particular certification."

"Be that as it may. If we're to be going by the book, there are five officers in this room who require a survival challenge."

"So how are we supposed to do this miserable thing?" Ben asked. That identified one other delinquent, at least. "On the holodeck?"

"The regulations are specific -- we need to have an away mission that can't be rigged, so it's important to find a planet meeting minimum specifications."

"When did you have your last survival certification?" Jean-Luc asked, crossing his arms.

"Seven years ago, I accompanied one of the cadet classes on their certification. Would you like to know how long ago yours was?"

Jean-Luc gave her a look of disdain.

"I think what he means to say is that his memory is intact," Mengis said. "He's kept up on physicals, if nothing else."

"Dismissed," Jean-Luc said, strolling toward the door at the far end of the briefing room. "I'll expect a message from you, Commander."

 

\--------------------

 

Jean-Luc stared at the planet through the viewport in his ready room. It was an unimpressive dust ball, one of the handful of worlds in the area that was on a short list of candidates for colonization. No sentient life forms in the survey conducted by the _Tenbala_ , the Vulcan vessel that had charted this area. There were animals but none larger than sheep. The place had been chosen largely out of convenience, and the added benefit of being along the way to their next diplomatic endeavor but well within Federation space.

The annunciator went off. "Come."

The person coming in had no appointment, and he was surprised to find himself looking at a cadet -- a young woman, with short black hair and a stunned look in her brown eyes. "Sir," she said, coming to attention.

Jean-Luc came around his desk toward the cadet. "I suppose you would be the randomly-selected companion I've been assigned for the survival exercise?"

"Yes, sir. We're supposed to beam down in half an hour. I'm Cadet Kathleen Barnett, from New Paris."

"Captain Jean-Luc Picard, from LaBarre, which is not far from the original Paris," he said, smiling at her.

She actually grinned, exposing white, straight teeth. "I know, sir. It's an honor to meet you."

"Is this your first survival exercise?" He knew it wouldn't be.

"I was put through the twenty-four hour exercise while I was at the Academy. It was horrible. I hope it doesn't rain on us," she exclaimed.

He gestured at the viewport. "It doesn't look like it gets much rain at all. Would you like some tea? I suspect we won't be able to make any for the next seventy-two hours."

They settled on either side of his desk, cups of tea in hand, and he asked her questions about her last month aboard the _Enterprise_ \-- she was supposed to meet with him in a week anyway, as he usually did with the cadets during their first tour of duty. He was grateful he hadn't been assigned someone slow-witted or unpleasant.

"Troi to Picard," came the summons.

"Yes, Commander?"

"Your appointed hour has arrived. Transporter room two, if you will."

"The cadet and I are on our way."

They materialized in a dry wash, boots sinking a little into the gray sand. The other survivalists were scattered across the planet, more than a day's march apart, ensuring that there would be no collaboration between teams. He glanced at his companion, looked around at the cloudless yellow-gray sky, the knee-high brush, and the coppery rocks in the river bed.

"We're going to need shelter," the cadet said. "We don't have anything to protect us against the UV. Maybe we should walk up this, look for an overhang on the banks."

"This is a deep dry bed, but it doesn't necessarily stay dry. We don't have access to anything that would reassure us there aren't flash floods. I think up there." He pointed up the steeper, taller of the two banks.

Barnett looked at him with a strange expression.

"If you're trying to figure out whether that was an order, the usual practice is for the participants to be of the same rank. We're supposed to be a team. In a real survival situation rank would be respected, but the test is more about survival skills than protocol."

"Okay. But you've done this a few times, I think, and you probably have a better idea of how to go about it."

"Oh, you could say I've had a fair bit of practice," he said, starting down the sandy swath toward the sloped bank.

They found a place to walk up rather than climb, and meandered along the path of least resistance in the brush toward a large boulder pile. "Shade, and maybe food?" Barnett said as they crossed a gravelly slope toward the largest boulder.

Jean-Luc pulled a long straight branch out of a tall shrub growing on the sunny side of the five-meter-tall rock and went around into the shade. Sitting on a smaller rock, he picked up a flake of shale and started to pound at the end of the stick against the rock he was sitting on.

Barnett meanwhile gathered up some vine she found in the brush, and dragged it over into the long shady patch. She started to pick apart the fibers and remove leaves. "We might be able to make snares with this, or maybe a shade cloth for when the sun is directly overhead."

"Our jackets can be head coverings. Prioritize."

She smiled at him, and shredded vines. "I hope there's a water source somewhere close."

"The duration of the survival certification is as it is for a reason -- the average healthy human can survive three days without water. Not that I intend to go without water, but having a finite end to the exercise can help us with strategy."

"Okay. The other thing I'm wondering -- sometimes these desert biomes have extreme temperature ranges. If it's below freezing tonight we may want to build a fire."

"I'm sure we can manage to collect enough wood while we're searching for water to manage. Fire will also help us cook anything we catch."

Barnett laughed a little. "This is really different than the last survival exercise. We were beamed to Patagonia -- it was so horrible, one disaster after the next. Within ten minutes of beaming down, my partner fell down this steep slope when the ground gave way, and I had to do almost everything on my own and set his leg, and then the rain started while I was collecting wood. I had to find dry tinder somehow. At least all we had to do for water was lean out from under the overhanging rock and open our mouths."

"My survival exercise, the first one, was in a jungle environment. It's quite difficult to go about the business of gathering supplies while a large cat is stalking you and the insects are trying to chew through your shirt." He held up the stick to check on the point he'd made. "The humidity made the heat oppressive. One of the worst parts of it was my partner developing trench foot."

"What?"

"It's a problem with the skin of the foot, caused by extended periods in boots while sweating and never drying out the foot. Something we don't think about on typical away missions of less than a day. Beam up, go back to quarters, remove the boots. Wearing boots for days on end can result in serious problems especially when you ignore the foot pain until it's impossible to walk."

"Sounds horrible. I had blisters, but it wasn't that bad."

Jean-Luc stuck the blunt end of his stick in the sand, and looked around. There was a natural depression in the sand just under the edge of the rock overhead, and he used the flake of rock to make it deeper. "This looks like a good place for a fire pit."

"When the sun gets a little lower I'll start gathering wood."

 

\------------------------------

 

He woke when it started to rain. It had proved to not be freezing at night, though temperatures were decidedly chilly once the sun went down. The fire had been quite welcome. They hadn't found food or water, but it was not so uncomfortable to be without it. Yet.

The sound of raindrops in leaves, on rock, brought the change of weather to his attention immediately -- the damp smell verified what it was. In the total darkness it was impossible to see anything. No starlight, no head or hand lamp, and only the glowing embers of the fire nearby to provide any illumination. He sat up and felt around for the remaining pile of sticks and fed the fire until it crackled and sizzled when drops struck the flames, so it wouldn't go out completely.

"Sir?" Barnett said, sounding bleary and tired. She'd curled up on the other side of the fire.

"Hopefully it won't start pouring down on us," he said. Something snapped off to his right, out in the darkness -- he tensed. Picking up his sharp stick, he found a piece of wood that still had dry leaves and smaller branches on it, lit it in the fire, held it up in an attempt to see beyond the radius of the firelight.

"What is it?" Then Barnett gasped -- she saw it too, gleaming red eyes a few meters away in the brush.

Jean-Luc leaped to his feet and shouted. Frantic pounding of feet resulted -- he saw rounded dark shapes and then nothing at all, and the sounds dwindled away into the night.

"Clearly not predators," he commented, taking a step backward to sit on a rock. "But that doesn't mean there won't be. In fact, that sounded like a bunch of prey, to me."

"I wish we had more wood."

"In the morning. For now, we'll settle for what we can drag from the bushes close to camp. And a pile of rocks to throw. I'll take the first watch."

"Okay."

Some moments later, he was on the alert again -- but realized at once that it was Barnett, who had started to snore lightly. He threw his torch, which had burned down to glowing ends, into the fire, and kept his sharp stick at the ready, listening carefully for anything other than the gentle patter of sporadic raindrops.

 

\--------------------

 

He woke again, to find it was early morning, and that Barnett was taking advantage of dawn's light and the cooler temperatures to begin collecting wood again. She'd wandered off into the brush, and he could see her bending and picking up sticks. Rising and rubbing his eyes, he knew they would need to look for food if they intended to not suffer hunger pangs. His stomach rumbled and he wished briefly for coffee. 

They spent a couple of hours wandering in circles around their rock pile picking up sticks. At the base of a large rock standing by itself approximately a quarter of a mile from their base of operations, he found a damp depression. Some exploratory digging revealed wet sand. After a moment's thought, he pulled off his jacket, tore out the lining, pressed it down into the wet sand until moisture dampened it and began to collect. He tore a tall shrub out of the ground and mounted it on top of the rock like a flag, using smaller rocks to brace it, so the location would be visible from their camp. Picking up his armful of wood, he hiked back to camp, to pile it near the fire pit and fed a few to the banked fire to keep it alive. Starting it the previous evening with a bow drill had been quite tedious.

"There are lots of things that look like rodents, in the holes around the bases of the large yellow-flowered bushes," Barnett said, coming around the rock pile with her own collection of sticks.

"I marked a seep over there," he said, pointing at the much-taller shrub he'd put on the rock, "and we should dig the basin deeper if we intend to collect more water. It looks fairly clean."

"Okay. Too bad we don't have a bucket."

"The lining of the uniform jacket is relatively water-resistant. Mine is already in the basin collecting water, we could use yours to carry some over to camp."

"You really have done this before," she exclaimed, watching him fashion a hat from the remains of his uniform jacket.

"I'm lodging a complaint that we don't have more uniform styles appropriate to various environments," he said. "Black is the wrong color for deserts."

"I'm just glad the diurnal schedule appears to be about the same as the ship's schedule," she commented as they started to walk to the spring he'd found.

"That's likely a fringe benefit of being assigned to the captain."

Barnett gave him a startled glance. "Sir?"

"The first officer knows the old man will be cranky if he isn't kept on the same schedule."

She laughed at it merrily. "You sound like my father," she exclaimed. "Always complaining about being so old. Mom says he just needs something to complain about."

"Yes, we grumpy old men enjoy that sort of thing," he said, glancing at the base of a large bush -- movement in the shadows had caught his attention. "Did any of the snares catch anything?"

"Not yet. I suppose grumpy old men also like snacks. Maybe there's something on some of these bushes that's edible."

"Don't start testing things yet. Let's secure a water supply then worry about food."

It took another hour to widen and deepen and collect water, then create a basin nearer to camp to fill, so the first one would continue to collect water. They decided to refill the closer basin on a regular basis. It gave them something to do, in addition to setting up a line of snares between the two basins to check while going back and forth. There was plenty of the vine around, so Barnett made him a hat and started working on another for herself to pass the time. 

Jean-Luc found some of the rodent holes she had been talking about and began to dig. He had the entire root system of the shrub exposed and was poking through some debris he found in one of the several chambers that the rodents had in the roots when Barnett arrived wearing her own wide-brimmed hat to see what he was doing.

"If the rodents are edible to us, as the survey suggested, then the things they eat should also be edible. So no need to experiment with plant material that might make us ill," he said, showing her a few shells. "See anything that looks like these?"

"I think they're on that short bush with the pink blossoms," she said, pointing. 

"I'll check the snares and get another refill of the water while you gather some. We just may have dinner by sundown."

 

\-------------------------------

 As the sun descended beyond the horizon, they took the last of three fat rodents they had trapped from the spit over the fire, and Barnett split the singed fist-sized things with her fingers. The basket she had made still held a few cups of the nuts she'd collected. All things considered, Jean-Luc thought, they were doing rather well. The only injury so far had been a rodent bite on his hand, when he'd grabbed a live rodent and suffered the consequences of trying not to let the thing chew through their snare and get away. Having clean water to rinse it out hopefully would keep him from an infection.

"This isn't horrible," Barnett said, nipped shreds of meat off the tiny bones. She sat cross-legged in front of the fire and pitched bones into the flames as she ate. "Tastes a little like chicken."

"Starfleet rations are like that too. Everything tastes like chicken -- "

" -- except the chicken," she finished for him. 

A low moaning call drifted across the plain. It was notable only in that it was the first such sound they had heard, and both of them turned their head in the direction of the noise. Jean-Luc pushed himself up to his feet and scanned the horizon. A few moments later, another call followed by a coughing sound.

Jean-Luc thought about Vulcan -- he'd been reminded of that desert all day, likely echoes of memories that had been retained from mind melds long past, rather than the brief time he'd spent on the planet himself -- and decided that borrowed skill might come in handy. Holding his fingers in a particular way, he brought his hands to his mouth and inhaled, deeply, until he could bring in no more air. The resulting screaming wail was loud, long, angry-sounding, and made Barnett jump a little.

Silence reigned once more, when he was done. 

"What was that?" Barnett murmured when he sat down and picked up what was left of his dinner from where he'd dropped it on a rock.

"My rather pathetic attempt at a le'matya call -- I doubt the animals here would know what one was, but it sounded intimidating to me."

"It would scare the hell out of me," she exclaimed. 

"I hope it didn't sound like a challenge to something else," he added. 

They finished eating in silence. They'd baited some of the snares with a few of the nuts, and so when he heard the scuffling off to their right, in the direction of the spring, he picked up the hammer he'd put together with a rock, a forked stick and a length of vine, and went to check it before the rest of the sunset faded away to darkness. When he came around a large spherical bush he realized that the snare had snagged something larger than one of the rodents -- in fact, when the animal raised its head, he saw that the rodent in the snare was in the creature's mouth and he hadn't caught it at all.

The next few seconds were largely adrenalin-charged reaction -- the animal growled, dropped the rodent, and lunged forward, and the hammer came down on it swiftly. The rock struck it a glancing blow and he had to dart to the right and swing again, this time connecting with the side of the head, and the weasel-like creature fell still. 

When he returned with the predator and the rodent Barnett grinned. "Wow, not bad. I guess if the rodents are edible the things that eat them might be?"

"I'm not sure we should keep these in camp. It might draw other predators, or scavengers, and either way the attention is unwanted. 

"So we eat them or take them out for a funeral service."

She skewered the rodent, and he took the small predator a few steps away and flung it away from camp in the direction of the dry wash. 

He let her take the first watch, assuming it would be as uneventful as the previous night, and awakened in the full darkness to screaming. It took the few seconds of leaping up and snatching his makeshift hammer to recognize that it was not a person. 

"Cadet?" 

"I'm all right," came the reply from somewhere to his left. "Not sure what that is."

He sat down again, and they stoked the fire up to make a larger pool of light and ward off animals.

"It's really sounding bad," Barnett said after they listened for a long time to the ongoing shrieking and wailing of whatever it was. 

"As long as it doesn't come over here we're fine."

"I'm glad I was assigned to you, sir," she said.

"I hope you won't complain too much about the snoring. I'm afraid my skills with charades are rather rusty, and I'm lousy at impressions."

A chuckle at it. At least she humored him. "I'm serious, sir. I actually think I might have gone a little crazy, if I had to be with some of the others. I'm a little tired of the guys."

The screaming creature fell silent, at last. It concerned him, so he sat there listening and trying to peer into the darkness.

"I'd ask you for advice, but that would give us nothing to talk about when we're supposed to meet, next week."

"Advice about what?"

"How do you know the difference between being anxious, and being on the wrong track?"

Jean-Luc turned to look at her, the orange-tinged light of the fire turning her face reddish. "It sounds like you are questioning your career path."

"I chose security. I think I would be good at it. But I'm not sure any more -- I think I want command."

"So you didn't start on command track? Sometimes that isn't essential. You may not realize that Commander Troi was the counselor, perhaps, and had no training at the Academy that prepared her for command?"

Silence. "I didn't know that," Barnett said at last. "I don't think I would have guessed it."

He chuckled at that, thinking of all the questioning and insecurities he'd seen Deanna suffer through. "Oh, yes. She's a psychologist. An excellent one. She's saved my life more than once, in several ways."

"I heard...."

It wasn't so difficult, when it came from cadets who were not judging them, or making assumptions. "Yes?"

"You were assimilated."

"Very old news, that."

"And you married -- her."

"Also old news. I've been missing the children, actually, when we're not being rained on, screamed at or collecting wood."

"I guess...."

"I'm not a different person than I was before I married her. Not in ways that really impact what I do."

Barnett put a few more sticks in the flames, and sighed. 

"I suppose some admiral complained about us, or perhaps the ethics class tore apart the issue of fraternization for a few weeks. Papers get written and opinions get published. If the opinions of others matter so much to you, command is hardly the place to go. Between Prime Directive violations, skirmishes with unallied races, and first contact regulations, it's a thorny place to be. Being sure of who you are, what your principles are, and where you stand within or without regulations, is important."

"So you really don't care what anyone says, about it?"

"Only insofar as it interferes in work relationships. We get a lot of opinion and angry blustering from flag ranked officers, but in the end, we're doing the work and it's why we are here. The work of expanding the Federation, and keeping the peace. Exploring the galaxy we live in, and meeting new species. Learning -- all the things we haven't seen yet, all the places we haven't been. Being stuck in an anomaly that challenges us to break a time loop. Being presented with a situation that isn't what it seems, and finding the truth -- we've helped civilizations and individuals, and stopped predators from taking advantage of the weak. We've seen stellar phenomena that no one has ever documented. No one in the Federation, anyway. At one point we had a new alien life form use the ship as its incubator and then depart for unknown regions of space -- it was never clear to us what it was, exactly, but it didn't bring us to harm, and it was fascinating to watch."

"I was going to ask what motivated you to join Starfleet, at some point, but I think I can tell now."

"It should say something that a grumpy old man can still be excited about it."

Barnett stoked the fire again. Their wood supply was of the sort that burned too fast, but they'd collected several large piles of it, so they would get through the night this time. Somewhere off to the far left, something screeched.

"I wonder if the cooking smells brought them in closer," Barnett said.

"It's likely. But we'll be gone by midday tomorrow, so no matter."

"I can stand watch for a while, if you want to sleep, sir."

He thought about the kids, likely sleeping, and Deanna -- he'd been able to sense her off and on since beaming down, distantly, though not very well. Now that he was awake, he doubted he'd fall back to sleep easily. 

"I've never been to New Paris," he said. "Is it anything like Earth?"

 

\----------------------------------

 

He was awake with the dawn, and Barnett was cleaning two more rodents. "I picked more nuts -- got more water. I dismantled the snares because I figured we could eat a big lunch after the debriefing."

"Officer level thinking, Cadet."

Jean-Luc stoked the fire up with the remaining wood while they cooked breakfast, and after drinking a few palmfuls of water he scooped a little over his head. He put on the vine hat, which was holding up well -- it looked like the sun hat he'd had on Kataan. 

"This was the least eventful exercise I've ever had," Barnett exclaimed as she brought back a last refill in the lining of her jacket, aka the bucket. 

"Don't say that -- you'll make the last few hours more eventful that way."

"Oh, I'd have to break three bones, to make it more eventful than the last one."

They settled in the shade with a basket of nuts after putting out the fire with dirt, as the sun rose higher. She was looking tanned, and he was sure he had a burn on the back of his neck, but it wasn't bad enough to complain about. They talked for a bit more about her indecision, and fell silent.

Jean-Luc thought it was almost midday, when his stomach started to rumble a little. He cracked a few nuts and pitched the shells at their fire pit. 

"Thank you, Captain," Barnett said.

He turned as he put two nuts in his mouth. "Cadet?"

"Is this how it is, on missions? You're just making decisions and doing the work? Because you know what you're doing. I get tired of the anxious cadet thing, it just makes it harder to think having the others arguing about something. How do you stay so calm? When that thing was screaming last night it scared me -- you just woke up and recognized it wasn't me, and called me, and you didn't get scared."

"I don't stay calm all the time. I decide to be. There are always going to be situations when you can't -- but panic helps no one."

"I can't picture you in a panic."

"I'm really good at breathing."

She laughed, but stopped quickly. "You're serious."

"Oh, yes. Sometimes I have the confidence. Sometimes I can force myself. Sometimes, I just breathe."

"Boothby told me to breathe, a lot."

He grinned. "Boothby was the only reason I made it this far. I almost didn't get into the Academy, and then I almost didn't make it through -- later there were times as a junior officer that I made some terrible assumptions, stupid decisions, and yet, I was able to pull it off. Mistakes don't have to be fatal."

The transporter interrupted them. Deanna materialized in front of them, smiling, and he probably had that same smile as he rose from the shady patch and made a futile attempt at dusting off his filthy pants. 

"What lovely hats," she exclaimed. "It looks like everything went well. Are you ready for the debriefing?"

"And a glass of wine, and a large salad as a precursor to a nice steak," he said. 

Deanna shook her head, amused by his request. "Troi to _Enterprise_ , three to beam up."

 

\---------------------

 

 They went to the briefing room on deck two as ordered, and found themselves watching the rest of the survival victims arrive. Deanna came in with the last team, and glanced at the feeding frenzy in front of the replicator, then at Jean-Luc and his companion lounging against the wall apart from the crowd.

"All right," she called out, getting everyone's attention. "You can all go to quarters following the debriefing -- come to order!"

Everyone shuffled in to settle in the chairs set up in a circle around the room. Jean-Luc could see why she'd chosen a circle -- it was easy to see what condition everyone had returned in, that way. Ben Davidson was glaring across the circle at Jean-Luc. He looked like he'd been attacked by several dozen of the rodents. Everyone was filthy, some were muddy, one of the cadets had a splinted arm. Edison had somehow lost one of his boots. A lot of sunburned faces, and those that had managed to wrest sustenance from the replicator clutched it in front of them like a lifeline.

Jean-Luc ate one of the nuts he still had a fistful of, and glanced at Barnett. She was trying not to look too smug.

What followed was typical of such exercises -- each team had a story of woe, some worse than others. Davidson had fallen into a thicket. The broken arm had resulted from a careless climb up something to get a "better view." Many had bedded down in some low-lying area and been a victim of pooling rain, with a few cases of near-hypothermia that resolved when the sun came up. The Bolian cadet had had an allergic reaction to some of the flowers. When it was their turn, Jean-Luc looked to Barnett, who took the hint and stood to deliver her report. It was unlike the litany of woes the rest were giving.

"After a quick survey of the area, we established a base camp and went about identifying resources and collecting the materials with which to protect ourselves from the sun, the animals, starvation and dehydration. We built and maintained a fire, and then set traps for rodents. We successfully defended ourselves against a predator and found a spring. At night we took turns standing watch."

Barnett sat down. Her peers stared at them. One of them said, "So what went wrong?"

Jean-Luc shrugged. "One of the rodents bit my hand," he said, putting another nut in his mouth.

"And you made a hat," Davidson grumbled. His nose looked pretty red and blistered.

"Not me -- I'm better with sticks. Cadet Barnett is better with hats."

"How did you drive away the weasels?" one of the more bedraggled cadets asked.

"I only saw one," Jean-Luc said. "I killed it and threw the body in the wash."

"You threw away meat?" exclaimed a cadet clutching a sandwich he'd been eating.

"We had plenty of the rodents -- we set up a trapline around our water source," Barnett said. "They tasted like chicken, I thought."

"I heard a le'matya," someone exclaimed. "I know I did! It wasn't safe to go out looking for food!" It was one of the two cadets who had holed up in a small cave and barely ventured out, Jean-Luc realized. "You were lucky to not get eaten, Barnett!"

Heads turned. Deanna sighed a little. "Cadet Bowman, le'matya are not -- "

"I grew up on Vulcan! It was a le'matya!"

"He's not crazy," Barnett said. "He must have been not far from us. The captain was trying to drive away animals at night."

Now everyone was staring at him. Jean-Luc shrugged. "I just wanted to sleep. The damned moaning was driving me crazy."

"You can do a le'matya call," Bowman exclaimed, clearly disbelieving.

Barnett prodded his arm. "Do it, sir. Show us how."

That led to showing them how to hold the fingers, and how to make the call -- which led to wide eyes and wild glances around the room.

After a pause, Deanna prompted the next team to report, and the debriefing went on. She heard them all out, and strolled to the center of their circle of the survived. "The obvious difference between the end results for the teams is, I believe, due to several things -- some of you went into the exercise confident and struggled. Some were in a high state of anxiety, and struggled more. A few teams had the unfortunate luck to be in areas where the surroundings were more desolate. You all survived, however, and hopefully you are taking this for what it is -- a learning experience. If you want to repeat this exercise on a holodeck, perhaps with a little help from Cadet Barnett and her hat-weaving skills... or perhaps the captain can instruct us all in how to find water in the desert?"

"Why isn't the captain teaching classes?" a cadet asked.

Deanna looked at him, crossing her arms.

"I did my own research, for this kind of thing. All that material is readily available for the asking. Except for Vulcan predator calls."

After dismissal, most of the cadets raced off for showers and food, perhaps not in that order, and Davidson and those who had been injured went to sickbay. Since he was not particularly uncomfortable and hoped to walk his wife home, Jean-Luc waited -- Barnett smiled at him, quietly thanked him, and went her way as well.

When they were alone in the room, Deanna approached and took the hat off his head. "You had fun, didn't you?"

"You didn't randomly choose that cadet."

"Of course not. Let's go clean you up."

"And you chose me for her, not the other way around. You knew she probably wouldn't open up to me in that meeting I'm supposed to have with her next week. And you're going to tell me I need to start teaching," he said with a sigh as they left the briefing room.

"Not at all." Deanna smiled at him fetchingly and took his arm. "You already have."

 


End file.
